


Visitations and Distractions

by orphan_account



Category: Thursday Next - Fforde
Genre: F/F, Femslash, International Day of Femslash, over 1000 words
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-07-18
Updated: 2009-07-18
Packaged: 2017-10-03 13:33:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One of the ways in which Aornis tortures Thursday in her dreams, and possibly herself as well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Visitations and Distractions

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the International Day of Femslash '09.

The mind-worm of Aornis Hades walked and brooded through a London street, pushing past the crowd of Thursday Next's memories. She called herself Aornis, too, because what else was she? "A shadow frozen in time" - that was how her brother Cocytus had once described a mind-worm in one of his poetic moods. It wasn't correct, but then what did he know? He was no mnemonomorph . He didn't know.

Shadows have no mind, no power, no free will. She did. She was a whole person split from her originator. The Aornis in the real world was her past, living another life somewhere, and they were both as full and whole as each other. There were boundaries, though. Things that the Aornis in Thursday Next's mind can't do, mustn't do. There was also the fact of her more imminent death. Either she will be assimilated back into the Aornis in the real world or she will fail in her mission and vanish. Either way she will be gone.

Wandering through dreams, she sometimes wonders if she doesn't hate that bitch Aornis for throwing her away like this. It was like throwing her self away on a futile imitation life form. They all die - all living things - dragged out of other living things in an endless sequence of flesh. Well, she had no flesh, here - nothing she couldn't change, no life she couldn't have, as long as she constructed it out of Next's memories. Anything at all, anything Next has experienced or seen second hand or can imagine was hers. She could dance with Marilyn Monroe in her pink dress in a shower of diamonds, she could sip champagne on a technicolor yacht, look through Thursday's eyes and see someone look back at her with the misplaced adoration of Next's lovers. She could even watch her own brother die.

Humans were ants. Hadeses crushed the other ants, but in the end they all were crushed themselves, ground to pieces and made into maggot food - or, as in her case, just winked out and forgotten. All of them. A planet full of suffering and pleasure, all wailing for a moment and then gone. She'd read the minds of the dying, of the babies being birthed, and it was all terror and fear and vanity and always, always going, going, gone.

She took herself to Crimea in Next's memory and walked through the bombshells falling, through the spray of red blood and grey dust blowing in the wind, to the cacophony of panic and death, and smiled. She held her hands out and let the warmth of fire and human flesh wash over her. Die, they all die, look at them, none of them is me, they're all illusions, they all disappear.

Illusions. They were memories. Somewhere outside some of these people lay as dust in the ground. Next was the only real thing here, besides herself. They weren't enough.

-

Thursday watched herself sleep, her back aching with the effort of sitting up just another hour. On the bed, young Thursday's eyes were moving under their lids. She held her rough, plump hand in her own withered one, and hoped for the best.

-

Thursday heard the whistle of the kettle and rushed to the ship's small kitchen. She got a blast of hot air on the face before hurriedly turning the kettle the other way, the steam leaving tiny droplets of moisture on her hair. She cursed lightly.

'Everything all right, sweetie?' Aornis called from the bed.

'Fine, honey,' Thursday said, and settled the kettle on a cool plate while she reached for cups in the cabinet. 'Tea's up in two ticks. Earl Grey, just as you like it.'

'You're a dreadful liar,' Aornis said and turned to her side, burying deeper into the covers. 'I've never heard you promise a thing and then had you actually deliver it. It'll probably be green tea again.'

'I think Ibb and Obb may have been stealing our teabags,' said Thursday, gazing sadly at the selection they had. It was mostly fruit teas and green tea, actually. 'What if I just pop into the town...'

'Never mind, it's probably just narrative imperative again,' said Aornis, rising from the bed with a grunt. Her hair was mussed and stuck out at odd angles. Thursday felt a splash of warm affection just watching her usually fashionable lover in such undignified disarray. Aornis's breasts emerged, small and high, from under the blanket, and the warmth Thursday felt became a shade more immediate sort. She put the cups down and jumped on the bed, tackling Aornis, who yelped.

'Who's affectionate today, then?' Aornis asked with a lopsided smile as Thursday dropped kisses on her neck, on her shoulders, her fingers lost in her hair.

'You lovely, sexy, wonderful...'

Aornis tackled Thursday right back, something not everybody could do, and they wrestled until Thursday was underneath her. She held Thursday's arms above her head and gazed at her, the thoughtful, closed-off look she sometimes had that Thursday found in turns worrying and incredibly sexy. Aornis leaned down and kissed her then, slow, languorous, wet and full, making her squirm with desire. Aornis caught both her wrists under one hand and used the other to trace a line from Thursday's neck to her breast, kissing her all the while, and played her fingers over Thursday's nipple.

Thursday made a muffled sound under the kiss, her hips bucking up against Aornis. 'Ah-ah,' said Aornis, pulling away. She released Thursday's wrists and brought her hands down to cup Thursday's face.

'Please,' Thursday breathed, soft and pliant in her desire. Aornis gave her a thoughtful look, caressed her face, then her neck, bringing her hands around Thursday's throat and beginning to squeeze.

She watched Thursday's expression go from confused to frightened to angry, watched her struggle, and kept tightening her hold, her thumbs keeping Thursday's air-pipes firmly closed. Thursday twitched, shook herself, threw herself about, struck her murderer hard enough the bruise. Aornis squeezed harder, her lip beginning to curl.

-

Thursday woke up with a start, Granny Next asleep next to her in a chair, her gingham dress covered with crumbs of cookie and the sunlight bright on the windows ahead. Thursday touched her neck, breathing and breathing, gulping air still. Her body still tingled with sex lust, too.

She got up, put a blanket around Granny Next's shoulders, and went to make tea. She had to glance back at the bed two times before she was convinced Aornis wouldn't be there.

Being strangled had been terrifying. As the whistle blew and Thursday blinked and could, within that blink, still see herself gay and happy with a Hades, she felt fear crawl into her bloodstream and settle in.

There was no reality she could be sure of, as long as Aornis was in her head.

-

Aornis sat between nightmares and laughed, laughed, the sound echoing from knives and empty corridors, madness bubbling in and filling up her empty places.


End file.
